*I am in the process of moving cities, as a result I have cut off all of my plates. This seemed like a good opportunity to reflect on the entire lifecycle of these plates - what went right, what went wrong, and what could be improved moving forward.

It's quite often that field reports are written on here detailing specific moments with a plate - the initial pick up, a shit test, a plate breaking - but it's not often that we see posts reflecting on the entire life cycle of a plate. That's what I am going to do here.

Now I have reflected on the situation as it evolved I have begun to see specific lessons which stand out. Some I saw at the time, and some I didn't see that are only obvious to me in hindsight.

This was one of my first plates coming out of an LTR so I was a little rusty and nervous going into this. There were a lot of fucks up while this plate was spinning. There was drama. But somehow I kept it spinning. Hopefully this will function as a humour and insightful read. I think it's best to share this warts and all - we don't learn if we don't fuck up.

While this post isn't quite a how-to guide with concrete lessons, it serves as a means to share my experieince with others in the community contributing content. In time, these lessons I may distill down into their own relevant posts.*

The Initial Pick up

I wrote a field report on how I initially gamed this girl through Tinder - Don't Overcomplicate Tinder. If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading this for a little context.

The interaction overall went very smoothly, though I did face some LMR. Looking back, I could have done a lot more to set a sexual frame and get her mentally aroused.

This was one of my first dates coming out of my LTR and so I was rusty and a little nervous. I spent way longer than I should have talking with her on the sofa instead of escalating.

Some of this though was unavoidable. As I came to find out later (and this will become relevant later in the post) this particular girl had a very negative self image of her body, was incredibly insecure, and had been subjected to sexual assault in her childhood.

Emotions

From the very first meeting, it was obvious that this girl was quite emotionally damaged. During the initial hook up she kept attempting to bring up her ex boyfriend.

The first time she brought this up, I simply changed topic. The second time (post sex), I decided to respond.

Normally the goto RP response would simply be to revoke attention to broadcast disapproval. I'm not sure why I decided to respond, perhaps because I knew this was a ONS and simply didn't care.

I decided to tell her flat out "You're still hung up on your ex", before launching into a full psychoanalysis of her emotional state.

Later I would come to discover that this is a technique OmLaLa coined "The Big Reveal" in his post "Don't Be Afraid to Dominate" Part 2.

There was silence.

After a few seconds, she speaks. "You're right".

From that moment, it was like a light switch had gone off in her head. Her entire demeanour towards me changed.

At the time I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But with the benefit of hindsight, it was as if she instantly caught feelings for me at that moment.

As I left she fell over herself to give me her phone number. She stopped shy of asking me to text her but the subtext was obvious. She was emotionally damaged, but she was kinda fun. When you're just rebuilding your roster, a plate is a plate.

Retroactive LMR

The next week I give her another date for a hook up.

She completely ignores my message and tries to make random conversation instead. I responded by leaving her on read.

After a short period of soft next, she reaches out.

"Hey wanna come for drinks this weekend? then you can come back to mine and fuck me senseless again? I really want you to stay the night this time"

Now we're getting somewhere. I respond. "Sound good, friday works for me. I'm busy this weekend".

She ignores my message again, instead asking me what I'm doing this weekend.

At this point, I become tired with her games and put her back on a soft next.

I received some great advice from the community about this, most notably a response from TwoInchesOfShaft.

The key points being:

• She lost all leverage over me by fucking me on the first night
• She knows I did not develop feelings for her even though she did
• She gave it up too easily giving her ASD and making her feel like a slut
• She wants to see me again because she views me as high SMV

This puts her hamster into an emotional tailspin. She wants to see me again because tingles and feelz. But her rational brain doesn't want her too because that would make her a slut.

This show itself as the hot/cold behavioural pattern above.

She NEEDS to talk to me. She WANTS to see me. But any mention of sex triggers her ASD.

Feelings

After another day of soft next, she caves. We agree to meet.

This time she asks if we can go to a bar first and play some pool rather than spend the whole night at her apartment. While this was a bit of a concession on my part, I was happy to agree.

In hindsight this was her laying the groundwork of moving the relationship towards an LTR, and giving herself plausible deniability to overcome her ASD.

This is where I made two grave mistakes, and another unintentional slip up that I will touch on later.

The night was successful, but I gave too much comfort. Drinks and shooting pool is datey, but ultimately fine. I was there to enjoy myself rather than to please her.

Holding hands? Mistake number 1. Usually holding hands is a part of my game. Take a girl by the hand, lead her to the next bar. Lead her home.

But in this context, it was probably a bit too far. I already knew she was starting to develop feeling for me. And, as this girl lived a fair drive from my house (and I was drinking) I was staying the night.

The next morning I'm a mess. I'm sweaty, my hair is all over the place - time for a shower. She doesn't have a shower so instead offer to run me a bath.

I get in the bath and she decides to join me. Mistake number two. She takes the opportunity to bathe me, wash my hair etc.

I can hear the collective groan of the forum in dismay. WAYYYYYY too much comfort. I should have shut this down. Hard.

As I left I knew I had fucked up. I knew she was going to push for an LTR and this plate would likely break.

Lesson: Calibrate your game to the circumstances.

This plate had developed feelings. The situation itself bred comfort (datey activity, staying the night). I should have responded by acting much more aloof than I usually would, and shut down any comfort with an iron fist to counteract the baseline comfort that was being provided by the situation.

Recovering

I decided to withdraw from her for a little while to try and reduce her comfort. 2 weeks before another meet should do the trick.

The two weeks go by without much eventful happening. She reaches out a few times with some general conversation which I handle. Standard replies, ignore boring shit etc.

I set the logistics. This time, she hits me with a comfort test/LTR push. FFS.

"Hey Bozza, how would you feel about this time being a real date?"

I shoot it down.

"I've enjoyed spending time with you but I feel like things are good the way they are. But if you want to do another activity that's cool"

She leaves me on read. I assumed at this point I had fucked this up beyond repair and the plate had broken. So I moved on to gaming other chicks.

Around 10 days later she hits me up out of the blue. She wants me to come over and fuck. No date, just sex. I agree.

When I arrive at her apartment she opens the door in full make up and lingerie. She pulls me inside and fucks me senseless the second I get through the door.

"I don't know why I'm doing this for you. You're a fucking asshole. You don't deserve this".

I couldn't help but give a shit eating grin. This is textbook. I had recovered the plate and she was eating out of the palm of my hand.

Female 'Machiavellian' Game

If you recall earlier in the post, I mentioned an unintentional slip up that I made on our second meet at the bar.

At the time it barely registered on my radar. In hindsight it was a carefully calculated move on her part.

You see, she lives in a fairly small town with only a few bars. There are a few decent bars in this town, with at least 3 of them having pool tables. Why specifically choose this bar?

Because she knew her ex boyfriend would be there and she wanted to use me as a pawn in her dread game.

Whilst sitting out in the smoking area I noticed a guy looking at me through the window. He gestures to his friend, points at me and the entire group begins staring at me. Odd.

Later in the night I go to the bathroom. As I walk out, who is standing outside? The guy who was gestured at. He gives me a glare, and for a split second seems poised to approach me, but decides against it. Odd I think to myself and carry on.

Later I would find out that this was her ex boyfriend. I suspect he was going to try and start some shit before he realised how big I was.

Lesson: Always be cautious of what situations you are walking into. This could quite easily have ended very badly for me, and I walked into this situation completely unaware and unprepared.

Back to the post lingerie sex...

After a few rounds she suggests going to the bar. Her apartment is small and quite boring. The bar is a 5 minute walk. Has good music and pool. I agree.

We spend some time at the bar before, all of a sudden, an entourage of her friends arrive. Supposedly they "just happened" to show up, but I suspect that she invited them.

Once again I had been tricked into another manufactured situation.

Lesson: Always be looking out for ulterior motives. If she wants you to be in a certain place at a certain time, there is often a reason.

Female Hamster Game

Among the friends were a couple of guys who were cool, a white knight beta orbiter, and 2 of her female besties.

It didn't take long before her female besties pounced on me with the usual vetting procedure. They were trying to probe as much information out of me as possible.

At first it was light small talk - what do you do, where do you live etc. I answered and got to know them.

Before long the questions began to become more probing. What's my relationship status. How did we meet etc. I knew what game they were playing and treated every question as a shit test.

Until we started to get into the meat and bones - "So, what do you think of [plate]?".

"She's alright".

The look on her friends face was priceless. You could see that she was agitated and annoyed by my response, but she began to become attracted. Over the course of the night her friends began to give me heavy IOIs and my plate couldn't keep her hands off me.

Lesson: When faced with her social circle, leverage them to your advantage

White Knights

I knew from the beginning that this white knight would be a problem. At first, he was pretty chill and we shot the shit along with the other guys.

As the night progressed and my plate and the other girls in the group gravitated towards me, he began to become annoyed. Never overtly annoyed but you could sense it was there. This random guy who doesn't even live here is fucking his oneitis, and all the other girls are enamoured with him.

Over the coming weeks this white knight actively tried to sabotage my plate. Never to any success, but he tried.

As I would run my soft nexts, aloof attitude and shut downs of her advances towards an LTR, dutiful Mr White Knight would be there to console her and tell her just how much of an asshole I was.

"[White Knight] thinks you're an asshole. He says you're just playing me" she would exclaim.

Yet, like clockwork, she would still invite me over to dutifully suck my dick.

After a few weeks Mr White Knight, incredibly, actually grew some balls. He realised that he wasn't going to get anywhere with his oneitis and he hard nexted her.

Well, that was until his emotions got the better of him. He unleashed a diatribe of emotional, butthurt and angry texts at her after his radio silence failed to elicit a response from her.

This is when Mr White Knight began to become a problem. He was friends with plates ex boyfriend but had cut him off for being a douchebag to his oneitis. Now that his feeling weren't being reciprocated, he went running back.

Now I had enemies. Ex-boyfriend, Mr White Knight and their band of rejects were in an alliance over their shared hatred of me.

For our next visit, I opted for a different bar. To my dismay, after a few minutes of being there this gang show up - small town problems.

They didn't try to start any shit, but there was a lot of glaring and a few snide remarks that I had to put down.

Drama

No plate is worth drama, and this was most certainly drama. I told her in no uncertain terms that I wasn't prepared to see her anymore if she would be bringing drama into my life.

She was quite upset but she understood. Not quite her fault, but it is what it is.

The next time she hits me up she prefaces by saying that she is going to organise some stuff for us to do free from drama.

When I arrive, she has a whole evening planned out for us. She cooks me dinner. She has bought popcorn and snacks. And a new set of lingerie for me.

This continued for the last few times I saw her. She made an active effort to organise things that would keep me entertained and happy so that I would keep coming back.

The sex became much more proactive and submissive. The sex was good prior, but she was making a real concerted effort to keep me around.

Lesson: Set clear boundaries and never tolerate drama.

Curtain Call

The last time that I saw her we both knew it was going to be the last time. I was moving city, she was flying back to her home country. She pulled out all the stops.

Although this time was different. Over the past 2 weeks she had been going through a tough time. I won't go into the details but about 5 serious events had happened to her in the space of 2 weeks and she was an emotional wreck.

And these weren't just female woe-is-me events. These are events that most men would find stressful to deal with, so I had a little sympathy for her.

After a few rounds of sex she began to open up about her emotions. Usually I would just shut this down, but as this was the last time I would be seeing her I decided to humour her.

We spoke for a little while and she got things off her chest. You could see that she was feeling better simply from talking about it.

But then she decided to overstep the mark. She began trying to probe me and get me to open up in response. I wasn't prepared to do that.

She pushed. I shut down. She pushed. I shut down. She pushed again.

I revoke attention. She continues to push. At this point I'm starting to get annoyed, and I was considering leaving. But having been drinking and unable to drive I was in a bit of a bind.

I hold firm, get up and go to bed. She caves and enthusiastically initiates sex.

Lesson: Give an inch, they'll take a mile.

Lessons

LMR

LMR can be avoided through setting a proper sexual frame, and getting the girl properly aroused. But some LMR is unavoidable if it is the result of poor self esteem or other issues.

Psychoanalysis can be a powerful tool

Responding to her emotions (in this case talking about her ex) by simply calling her out on her bullshit and laying her motivations bare completely changed her perceptions of me.

The court is still out on how this can be leveraged to my advantage.

Soft nexting works

It's established theory here because it works. Even if you are self doubting whether a soft next is the right course of action, stick with it.

Calibrate your game to the circumstances

The balance between AF/BB is not static. It must be calibrated both to the girl and the circumstances.

In this case the situation by default offered her a lot of BB comfort which was unavoidable, and that lead to her developing strong feelings prematurely.

I should have acted more aloof and IDGAF to counteract this comfort.

The talk is a shit test

When she pushes towards BB/LTR, set your boundaries and hold the line. A soft next may be enough to bring her back in line.

Always be cautious of what situations you are walking into

You don't know what drama exists in this chicks life, and simply by going to a bar I could have ended up in a group brawl with a jealous ex-boyfriend.

Keep your guard up at all times.

Always be looking out for ulterior motives

Women and cunning and calculated. They will happily use you as a pawn in their power games.

If she wants you to be in a certain place at a certain time there may be a reason.

Always be on the look out for what she could pose to gain from her suggestions, and make sure you a not a unknowing pawn in her games.

When faced with her social circle, leverage them to your advantage

Avoid meeting her friends in the first place.

But if you do end up meeting her friends and social circle, leverage them to your advantage to raise your own percieved SMV.

White Knights

White knights are a pain in the ass. Try to avoid them at all costs.

Set clear boundaries and never tolerate drama

No plate is worth drama.

Give an inch, they'll take a mile

Never relent or let down your guard. Even a well intentioned BB move will be seized upon.